Style is a product of evolving social relationships as well as a product of relationships between the elements in an individual. This research through practice investigates the meaning of seamlessness and its implications for fashion style in connection with Walter Benjamin’s notion of aura.

Aura, which forms a central theme in Benjamin’s thinking, alludes to the ambiguity in human-artefact relationships and the ambiguity of experience in temporal and spatial dimensions. I intend to trace a garment from an object in the maker’s hands to the object worn or seen by the wearers and viewers, through the changes of ownership. In doing so, I aim to demonstrate the equal significance of permanence and ephemerality in style, in relation to the making, circulation, loss and regeneration of aura.The studio practice focuses on the seamlessness in garments. The relatively recent attempts to eliminate seams is somewhat ironic considering the fact that seams play increasingly complicated roles as a garment form evolves. Whereas the existing seamless garment construction methods produce 2D forms, with the aim of reducing production costs, my interest lies in the meaning and aesthetic qualities of seamlessness. I aim to develop handmade 3D seamless woven garments, which reflect the vertical, moving body shape, and ultimately to evaluate how seamlessness affects perception of body, garment and style.

If material qualities of fraying and unraveling woven cloth hints at the impermanence of social relationships and inalienability of objects at the same time (Weiner, 1992), what are the symbolic aspects of seams which stop fraying and shape this material? The investigation into seamlessness in studio practice leads to the examination of fashion style as an indicator of the inter-subjectivity, the seamless boundaries in human relationships. Paying attention to the in-between types and multifaceted viewpoints, I aim to define the aura of style beyond alienable-unalienable and subject-object dichotomies.

_{Weiner, A. (1992) Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping-While-Giving, Berkeley: University of California Press.}